


Memento Mori

by CandiedSpectres



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, M/M, Root A Ending, Tokyo Ghoul √A | root A, ghoul!Hide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandiedSpectres/pseuds/CandiedSpectres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's in a moment like this that Hide remembers the fragility of human mortality.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this as a draft for a really long time, and I finally decided to finish it, because I'm a sucker for a good ol' role reversal.

Hide knows from the second he wakes up on the dark floor of Anteiku that something went wrong. 

He knows it from the gut wrenching stench of familiar blood and the cold moonlight that reflects off of puddles of red.  
The night air is unfriendly and bites at his raw skin, and he can't feel anything beyond the blood thrumming through his veins and the ache of his wounds.  
His muscles hurt but he grunts through the pain to push himself up off of the floor. 

The smell of coffee and something else is thick in the air, and he can't quite figure out where the source is.  
It's only after Hide stands to his feet that he recognizes the emptiness where pangs of hunger would be, and the fact that he has eaten something is more disconcerting than the sweet smell of blood that still makes his stomach growl.

He hears the clatter of coffee mugs and he is sure that the cold and the insomnia of the past week have sent him spiraling into delirium, because there is no possible way that Kaneki of all people is here, that Kaneki was smiling at him, that Kaneki was bleeding from his stomach. 

Suddenly the smell that filled the air turned sour and Hide recognized the taste of someone's blood in his mouth.  
All at once his stomach convulses, he feels like throwing up, and he doesn't care if he loses all of his strength here because he doesn't want that inside of him, he doesn't want his best friend's flesh digesting and fueling his own monstrous existence. 

He's tempted to shove his fingers down his own throat, anything to make his body reject the meat that lies heavily in the pit of his stomach and it's when he feels himself heave that Hide hears Kaneki moving towards him.  
Heat rises to Hide's cheeks in the form of tears and he tries to make them go away because he doesn't want to become weak enough to cry, especially not in front of Kaneki.

The coffee that is put to his lips is comforting, and for a moment he craves for the taste of anything except meat; chocolate or cake or french fries, anything, because the taste of flesh only reminds him that he's a monster. 

He already knows he's eaten too much, he's pushed himself past his own limits, subjected himself to cannibalize his own kind, and for what?  
To get stronger?  
To protect his home? 

He was crying now, everything seems to have crumbled away; his strength, his courage, it all melted away when he tasted Kaneki's blood on his tongue.  
The soothing hands on his back feel alien and Hide doesn't even feel like he deserves it.  
Kaneki pulls him into an embrace and he knows that Hide needs him. 

He can't help but curse his own selfishness for feeling betrayed when Hide stopped showing up at Anteiku, and he only feels worse with every stroke on Hide's back and arms.  
He can feel the firm, toned muscle but at the same time it all feels so weak and frail, like one more touch would break him to pieces. He brushes his hand through stark white hair. The originally blond strands had become so coarse and disheveled, and Kaneki wondered if Hide even bothered to properly take care of himself between his fighting and eating.

The scars burned onto Hide's feet and wrists wrench Kaneki's heart with a familiar pang of despair, the same that he felt when he wondered why Hide had abandoned him.  
Kaneki felt so helpless on his own that he blamed himself for Hide's disappearance, spending sleepless nights scrounging the internet for any fragment of information and sending torrents of apologetic and illegible texts to Hide's phone because he couldn't stop his hands from shaking and his sight was blurred by tears.  
It was through his search that he began working for the CCG, and it was from that job that he was able to find Hide passed out in the sewer at the end of a trail of blood.  
He just wanted to help at last, so he dragged the unconscious Hide to Anteiku and let Hide feed off of him. 

The pain was numbing compared to the heartache and exhaustion he felt due to the stress of Hide going missing and ignoring all of Kaneki's attempts to contact him.  
It didn't matter because he was finally home, and as long he was alive and happy, Kaneki's own life didn't matter.

It was now that he held the trembling young man in his arms that he realized just how fragile his optimistic friend was, and how the world of ghouls had darkened his sunny personality. Every part of Hide's being was pain.  
Pain in the flaring kakugan, pain in the calloused and scarred skin, pain in the hot tears streaming down his face, pain in his face that he hid from Kaneki, ashamed at his body for breaking down in front of the only one who mattered.

External pain, Hide realized, was only a relative thing.

Believing that something hurts only makes it more painful.  
It was when a centipede gnawed through his head that he had this epiphany, and when he was finally able to disregard pain completely.  
He finally became strong enough to protect others.

What had he sacrificed for power?  
Compassion? Kindness?  
He didn't believe so.

He obviously showed compassion to those who he very well could have put through the same hell that he had gone through.  
He was nothing but kind to those he cared about.

The feeling of delicate hands on his cheeks forced him to rethink his actions over the past months.  
Would Kaneki be proud of him if he knew?  
If he had felt the need to hide his efforts from the person he was devoted to protecting, could he really say that the things he had done were right?

If Kaneki knew just how much Hide had torn himself apart, how many people Hide had killed, consumed, destroyed, would he still hold him tenderly as he did now?

Hide wants to tell him everything, just to make the other stop giving him this undeserved comfort.

What would trigger the most appropriate reaction?  
Which of his horrific deeds could he describe that would force Kaneki to push him away and call him a monster?

Perhaps it would be when he shattered the bones of teenager who had no power against him, or maybe even the thousands of ghouls he had consumed for his personal gain, ripping apart bodies and flinging bits and pieces in an uncontrolled fit of delusion.

His thoughts shatter as the cold, dead weight of Kaneki rests on his shoulders.  
Hide can feel the soft breaths on his neck, but they are weak, forced out the of the other man's lungs as if to prove that he is still clutching onto what fragments of life remain in his grasp.  
It's a moment like this that reminds Hide how fragile humans are compared to ghouls.

Recognition of his own mortality had been erased when he decided that pain no longer mattered.  
The wound on Kaneki isn't healing, and Hide knows of no way to patch it up.

A needle of apologies and thread of tears are useless when he wants to stitch the hole in his best friend.  
Hide can only hold him close, muttering apologies into Kaneki's ear.  
He slumps against a wall, running his fingers through black hair that he has longed to touch for much too long.

The air around him goes cold and Hide freezes, trying to stay still to make sure he can still feel the weak rise and fall of Kaneki's chest.  
The absence of movement make the silence feel heavier than the weight of death that rests on Hide's chest.  
His body trembles, and empty sob rattles his bones as he clutches the limp body to his chest.

 

The thread was caught the moment a he woke up to a white ceiling with organs that were not his inside him.

He ran.

The life he led continued to move forward, but the thread of his being was never released, pulling, pulling away from its source.

Now, as the night air is cold, bitter, and empty, and snow and ash fall over the bloodstained battleground, a one-eyed ghoul carried a body past the recovering clusters of people.

A fog of despair has fallen over the sun, snuffing out its light and replacing it with the cold, dead silence of nighttime.

The last stitch pulls away from the thin fabric of life that dwells within a broken man.

 

With a cold body in his arms, he has unraveled.


End file.
